* Examine the key challenges for public sector management in the global south. Illustrate your answer with contrasting country examples.
Most of the global south countries such as the African countries have attained their independence around the 1950’s and 1960’s. The public sectors which are known as the government sector have set of roles that need to be look after the welfare of the state such as the security, environment, health system, education and so forth. The public sector in the global south has some key issues that need to be tackled. Some of the key challenges that needs tackling is the reduction of poverty, corruption and aid which has been prevailing for a very long time.
Yet, it cannot be easily forgotten to mention
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The financial institutions allocate financial aids to countries according to their criteria and how well their public institutes operate or perform. This leads to pressure on the global south, leading to governance conditionality which many countries are not so happy about it. For instance Kenya had been given five times aid without any result of progress. Until 2000 IMF bank actual withheld aid from them after a court hearing about the anti-corruption authority. The challenges that global south face is the need for good governance. (Glennie,J, 2008).
However, some countries are not happy with the fact that the international institutions need to dictate to them on how to run their country and apply pressures. On the other side of the coined most of the global south countries have less accountability and transparency which makes difficult to account for the use of the fund. The government capacity is really important for the development of the public sector as many countries have developed under a strong regime and the outcome was brilliant example Korea and China. Accountability is very important for both the public sector as well as the international donors; it also gives voice to the poor people.
Theoretical perspectives
At the various theoretical perspectives which have influence in the situations in Africa are the New Public Management (NPM), New Institutional Economics
WORLD BANK: governments play an important role in development, but there is no simple set of rules telling them what to do.
We addressed our concerns towards the efficiency of this resolution as we proposed a motion that is ensuring the efficiency of the financial aid use in improving health service and infrastructure in vulnerable nations. As the delegate of Congo started as the first speaker, she stated in her speech that cooperation with Anti-Corruption agencies should be enforced in order to monitor the expenditure of financial aid as well as enforcement of laws from those agencies. The delegate of Venezuela took consideration of the correlation of this topic that can be elaborated on QARMA number 3 regarding governmental responsibility on this issue. Some delegates also added that those financial aids should be more transparent by making financial reports that will later on be published by the WHO for reliability that could be viewed publicly. While the delegate of United Kingdom proposes a solution to hold a minimum development requirement for countries granted financial aid, by doing so it could ensure that the use of financial aids are efficiently used. While the others have the same opinions, as they are convinced that there needs to be cooperation with other UN bodies such as the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (EcoFin) having a role to do the
The aid provided by rich countries to poor countries is merely deemed as charity and not appreciated enough. Furthermore, aid in the form of monetary relief ends up never reaching the people in aid, instead it is consumed by the corrupt committees. To say that aid should not be given is a strong statement made by Garrett Hardin, but in some instances, his claims do mirror reality. However, other claims made by the author are not in agreement and makes him appear rather ethnocentric. To summarize, aid should be given, not through money, but by educating third world countries.
The question at hand is not whether aid from the developed north should be given at all, but whether or not it should be increased to help ease the suffering of the developing countries in the south. Every country, whether rich or poor, should have compassion for the suffering. However, it is not the duty of the developed north to completely take care of every developing country. In the present, there are serious problems that need to be addressed dealing with how aid is given out: misuse of funds by governments, the corruption it creates, economies it destroys, lack of votes it buys at the United Nations, and finally the question of who has priority.
The trouble with aid reveals, over time government in start to lose their sovereignty as they keep receiving aid. The aid created restrictions by the government because of the regulations of placed by those giving the donations. For they have a certain idea of how and where the money should be spent. This reduces the accountability of the government to its people and gives more agency in countries to while reducing the agency of the local government to intervene their rule of a state.
In Besteman’s ethnographies, South Africa face the challenges of transforming its self after dealing with apartheid. In reality , I had expected more data on the post-war Sierra Leone , only because it has been a decade since the conflict ended. I believe that my frustration stems from me being originated from Sierra Leone. I would love for this country to pick up in terms of macroeconomics and microeconomics. But I now understand how detrimental civil wars are. My study shows one of the few concept discussed in class of African. It represents the most common problem the majority of African countries are facing , which is their corrupt government. The development for majority of African countries would be more of a constant growth if the government systems were firm and
The large cash injection would then create a “greasing the gears effect” and allow for the jumpstart of economic development. Between the years of 1948 and 1952 the U.S. granted $13 billion to revamp the European economy (Dambisa, 2009: 35). This particular method achieved great success in post-World War II Europe and was known as the Marshall Plan. Due to its effective and unquestionable success in this era, the model was applied to economic development in Africa with the confidence that the same outstanding results would ensue. However, the application of the Marshall Plan to Africa is problematic for three reasons. One, the Marshall Plan had a rigid duration period of five years while, the concessional loans and grants to Africa over the last 50 years have been unending (Dambisa, 2009: 36). Two, European institutions were already in place to receive the aid efficiently and effectively. In Africa, however, these same institutions are either non-existent or grossly ineffective due to corruption (Dambisa, 2009: 37). The vast amounts of corruption have been heavily documented. Mobutu Sese Seko, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997, for example, stole an equivalent of U.S. 5 billion dollars from his people (Dambisa, 2009: 48). However, even the less corrupt rulers of many African countries had few options as to what to invest the aid money on. Consequently, the bulk concessional aid goes directly into consumption without a variety of investment outlets. This process does not solve the problem but instead, allows for the cycle to continue. Lastly, three, the money from the Marshal had specific targets to repair physical infrastructure such as, roads, communications, sewage, factories, and electric systems (Dambisa, 2009: 37) In Africa today, the scope of the
Africa has become aid dependent in the sense that “few of its states can carry and routine functions or deliver basic public services without external funding and expertise”(Goldsmith, Foreign Aid and Statehood in Africa). Foreign aid is meant to be used as a means of creating the infrastructure and institutions to carry out the functions of a nation. African nations have become so used to foreigners providing many basic functions and necessities of their people they do not feel the need to provide it themselves. This thinking has allowed for unneeded increases of foreign aid because of the lack of progress made by Africa with the current spending. Western nations have done little to nothing to give African nations incentives to use the foreign aid in an effective manner so that less and less foreign aid has to be provided to
And as peoples trust in the State to fulfil its tasks dwindles, so does the States power to provide those services (ibid.). But from a development perspective things are a bit different. Most problems in delivering services to citizens are financial in nature (Greve, 2012), but where a lack of funds might stop State-led development, it is not detrimental to the State as an agent of it. For what is perceived ‘’good development practice’’ there is always international funding (for example McGrath, 2015, Worldbank.org, 2015, Undp.org, 2015). This paper does not go into the debate of is ‘’good development practice ‘’ good or not- it takes internationally sponsored and promoted development practice as implicitly good. And for the sake of argumentation on- is the State a good or bad agent of development- it does not matter what kind of development it promotes. So this good development is taken as the one we want our states to be agents to. And the State relying on foreign sources of funding development practice when it lacks state funds for development might be positive. To clarify, a state that runs a budget deficit does not have the monetary power to start development policy. This allows for the internationally funded and tried-out development practice to become the only development practice a state can enforce (finance), because it can fund it from external sources such as donations,
“Benefits of foreign aid have recently been under severe scrutiny. Several observers argue that a large portion of foreign aid flow from developed to developing countries is wasted and increases unproductive public consumption. Poor institutional development, corruption,
In an article published by The Spectator entitled “Why foreign aid fails – and how to really help Africa,” Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson condemn the current system of foreign aid granting and suggest an alternate, more efficient solution. They support their points by deducing that “extractive institutions,” in which incentives for economic prosperity are few, are the culprit of enduring poverty; by providing examples where foreign aid failed to reduce poverty (Congo, Angola, Syria, and South Africa); by giving testimonies from former British Prime Minister David Cameron and multilateral institutions concerning the effectiveness of foreign aid; and by advising an alternative solution to combating poverty, involving diplomatic relations
Over the last 50 years, the world has struggled to maintain an economic balance and stability, while flourishing countries try to maintain a steady income to support its people and relations with other countries. Therefore, when a continent like Africa fails to maintain a stable government and economy, super powers such as America decide to intervene with its relations. Africa has great potential to become another pillar of the world’s economic structure with its mass amounts of uncultivated land. Unfortunately, corruption and irresponsible governments hinder that progress. Foreign aid while helpful should be limited to a yearly amount because it allows the government to repudiate responsibility and gives room for corruption; it creates a
In concluding politics and governance in the third world has come a long way from the colonial days but all the legacy of the old are still present in the form of corruption etc. in bureaucracies, many third world countries are still in poverty and grossly underdeveloped, in trying
In the late 1990’s, Malawi was facing financial hardships due in part to an AIDS epidemic. Gauding. The country reached out to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help. The IMF imposes strict rules that countries looking to obtain financial aid must adhere to, in many cases causing the country in need severe social problems, including in the case of Malawi when they asked for aid to help mitigate the unfortunate circumstances that had left many in the country in severe poverty, a poverty that had developed to the level that the poverty itself was causing death and health problems in the form of starvation and lack of basic medical solutions. The IMF stipulates that the countries it offers aid to must stop giving subsidies to its citizens. Gauding. In the case of Malawi, the local government was giving subsidies to farmers for nitrogen fertilizers, which allows food to be grown to feed the nations people. Once the IMF demanded a stop to these subsidies, the rate of starvation sky rocketed.
During the last decades the idea that high quality institutions are positively related to economic growth and development (Acemoglu et al., 2005) has gained relevance in the mainstream academic scene as well as within international organizations and cooperation agencies. The phrase Institutions Matter! epitomizes the essence of the New Institutional Economics approach and its policy implications. Certainly, a set of “Global Standard Institutions”, focused in the consolidation of free market, transaction costs and property rights frameworks, has inspired the contemporary policy agenda of multilateral organizations such as World Bank and the Monetary International Fund, eliciting several structural reforms in developing countries. In this regard, for instance, the World Bank created a specific research group for “… study the causes and consequences of governance for development” (Daniel Kauffman et al. 2009: 1), which has consistently monitored key governance indicators in 212 countries and territories between 1996 and 2008, gathering cross-sectional information as critical inputs for the Bank and Governments´ policy design and implementation. However, failures and contradictory outcomes in many developing countries elicited changes in the multilateral policy approaches during recent years, shifting to a more contextual-sensitive approach (Stiglitz, 2002). In this regard, Douglas North has highlighted